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By Courtney Hebert ’10, Fine Arts Content Tutor
Let me start by saying that although I personally love art and the history that surrounds it, I recognize and accept that it is not so important to everyone. Particularly, I would not expect artwork that is over a hundred years old to resonate with a modern teenage boy. That is why this experience caused me to smile.
As some of you might know, I have been working on my senior thesis all semester featuring works by John Singer Sargent. In March, I made a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to view one of the works I was writing about.
The gallery that normally houses American paintings at the Met is currently under renovation, and as a result, some of the paintings from that gallery are kept in what is called “Visible Storage,” a sort of warehouse arrangement where artworks are lined up in tight rows to be viewed.
One of John Singer Sargent’s most iconic paintings is Madame X (see above image), so named because it created such a scandal that the woman in the painting did not wish to be named in its title. In 1884, it was seen as ghastly pale, and incredibly risqué (originally, it was painted with one shoulder strap hanging off, something the artist eventually changed due to the embarrassment it seemed to cause). Today, Madame X seems the very embodiment of high fashion, with her svelte figure and dramatic silhouette, and is a very beloved painting. Madame X is currently in the “Visible Storage” section of the Met, currently out of its usual frame which somehow makes the viewing even more intimate. I was not studying this particular painting, but another large portrait directly next to it.
As I spent quite a long time standing in front of my painting, studying it and taking notes, a young man (probably about 16 or 17) came around the far corner of the aisle I was in, walking like a person with a purpose. He was quickly scanning the rows of paintings with his eyes, not stopping long on anything, until he came to Madame X, right next to me.
He stopped dead in front of the painting, a broad grin breaking out on his face. He actually let out a sigh of pleasure. I silently regarded him from the corner of my eye, as I tried not to intrude upon this obviously momentous meeting between him and the painting he had been searching for. I was surprised and delighted, because outwardly he didn’t even seem like someone who would have been so moved by a piece of art. Just a boy in a sports hoodie and jeans.
After a few minutes, his group caught up with him, more people his age and one adult male chaperone. “You found what you came for!” someone said. He responded excitedly, “I just came around the corner and there she was!” They viewed her as a group for a moment, and then discussed how they had an hour left, and would meet up again in the lobby. Then they all walked off together.
A few minutes later, the young man quietly crept back on his own to view Madame X once more with the little time he had left in the Museum. If I had not been busy with my own research, I would have walked away and given him a private moment, which is what he seemed to be wanting.
I wish I knew more of the back story here. How was he first exposed to this painting, and why did it attract him so much at such a young age? Obviously he was on a class trip of some kind, probably an art class. But why Sargent? Why not 60s pop art, or something more modern? Or even something more universally popular, like the Egyptian wing. He was the only one out of his group that seemed so intent upon the work. I kinda wanted to have a conversation with him about why that one painting out of all the paintings in the Met was so important to him.
